Where the Mystical Meets the Market: Creativity and Commerce in the Production of Popular Music

Abstract

Taking as my theme the familiar opposition between commerce and creativity, this paper contrasts different sociological approaches to the production of popular music and questions some of the assumptions about the rational nature of the market and mystical character of creative inspiration, that are often implied when these terms – ‘creativity’ and ‘commerce’ – are used in this binary oppositional manner. In arguing for a sociology of the mundane practices that produce ‘commercial’ and ‘creative’ texts, I suggest that the production of popular music does not so much involve a conflict between commerce and creativity, but a struggle over what is creative, and what is to be commercial.